A very simple list (with Alfred and GeekTool)

Things you’ll need: Alfred with Powerpack and GeekTool.

The premise is simple: maintain a simple list with Alfred, use GeekTool to show it on your desktop.

The Alfred part will be a Keyword → Run Script Workflow. The keyword I’m using is list, with an argument required.

For the script, I’m using PHP because that’s what I’m most comfortable with. The summary is this

1. Get the list file
2. Read the json
3. Add/remove based on the query from alfred
4. Write the json back to the file

// the file
$file = '/full/path/to/list.json';

// read it
$list = file_get_contents( $file );

// make it parseable
$list = json_decode( $list, true );

// the query from alfred
$q = "{query}";

// pop the first word off
$_q = explode( ' ', $q );
$command = array_shift( $_q );

switch( $command ) {
	case 'delete':
	case 'd':
		unset( $list[ implode( $_q ) ] );
	break;
	case 'reorder':
		$list = array_values( $list );
	break;
	case 'removeall':
		$list = array();
	break;
	default :
		$list[] = $q;
	break;
}

// back into flat json
$list = json_encode( $list );

// write it
fwrite( fopen( $file, 'w' ), $list );

I’ve also unchecked escaping for all but double quotes.

This enables a few basic subcommands.

• > list add item Append something to the list
• > list d {item-key} Remove something from the list
• > list reorder Reset the keys
• > list removeall Remove all items

Then the GeekTool part. Drag a new shell geeklet to your desktop, and add a script that can read and output the list. Again, I’m using PHP.

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

$list = file_get_contents( '/Users/KLampert/Documents/list.json' );

if ( ! $list || '[]' == $list ) return;

$list = json_decode( $list, true );

$max = max( array_keys( $list ) );
$len = strlen( $max );

foreach ( $list as $k => $v ) {
	$i = str_pad( $k, $len, ' ', STR_PAD_LEFT );
	echo "$i. $v\n";
}

Mine refreshes every 5 seconds.

Very basic, which is what I need.

Oh, and don’t forget to change the paths!

Download: read-list.glet, List.alfredworkflow